Last night, I took a look at the governance vote of a certain project, and the more I read, the more it feels like “delegated voting = outsourcing your brain.” To put it plainly, in the end, it’s the addresses of a few people deciding the parameters. Everyone just delegates to save time and effort. As a result, the governance tokens might not even be governing the protocol itself—it could be that they’re mainly empowering the group of people who already hold more concentrated voting power. I can understand it, too. Voting is too much hassle, and the proposals are too long; when people are just working, where would they find the time to read every word… but after a while, it starts to have that oligarchic vibe.

Thinking it over, the same logic seems to apply to the recent collapse of blockchain games: inflation + studio bots + the coin price spiral breaking down—pretty much the same pattern. Power and rewards tilt toward a small number of “more professional” people, and the rest are left with only emotions and the chance of getting stuck holding the bag. Either way, I’m going to take a discount on the word “governance” for now. If I can avoid delegating, I won’t delegate. If I really do need to delegate, I’ll only pick someone I can understand and who is willing to explain. That’s where I stand for now.